Picking up the Pieces
by Kgirl1
Summary: It's been a week without Kanan: a week of failed missions, fruitless surveillance and botched extractions. The Ghost crew and their leader do their best to carry on. Takes place during season one, somewhere between "Call to Action" and "Rebel Resolve."


Zeb didn't mind taking what everyone referred to as the red-eye shift. He liked when the ship was quiet; while he'd come accustomed to the bustle and banter that were inherent to life on the _Ghost,_ there were definitely moments when he wished for peace. Ezra had turned out to be a tolerable roommate, but he was a roommate nonetheless, and Zeb's sensitive hearing didn't comply well with the kid's infrequent-but-still-too-frequent snoring (which, to Zeb's eternal frustration, Bridger still vehemently denied). Zeb much preferred the privacy of the night watch and then a nap during the day, when he could have the room to himself.

Of course, everything was all mucked up now that Kanan was gone. Nobody wanted to change the schedule; they all seemed to be holding on to some irrational hope that he was coming back, so they'd picked up his shifts at random, with Hera shouldering the majority of the work (as usual). She'd been pulling doubles, triples even, until he'd finally convinced her to get some rest—their captain had protested until he'd pointed out that she'd just put a screwdriver away in the silverware drawer. Finally, and with a literal nudge from Chopper, she'd withdrawn to her cabin (the droid had escorted her there; even Zeb had to admit that the bucket of bolts had his moments).

She hadn't said a word about Kanan in the week since the Imperials had taken him. Zeb was starting to worry; Hera had to be grieving, the rest of them were—he'd heard Ezra muffling sobs in their bunk, and Sabine's hands were covered in more paint than he'd ever seen them— but as always, the twi'lek was keeping her cards close to her chest.

Zeb wanted to say something, but the words escaped him, as they frequently did. So he continued taking his shifts, training with his bo-rifle; trying to keep the mood light. Business as usual. A false normal was preferable to admitting just how wrong it all was.

He was making his way to run diagnostics on the _Phantom_ (the same diagnostics that had been run every night, on a ship that hadn't been taken out in over a week, but were still run anyway, as they were one more thing to distract from the reality of Kanan's capture) when he smelled it, a sharp tang to the recycled air. Zeb's ears raised in alert, and he looked around him; there was a smudge of indigo on the floor, still wet. Possibly Sabine's paint, but there was another splotch two feet up, and then another one, and while Sabine may have been chaotic at times, she was rarely sloppy, and always extremely conservative with paint.

Slowly, he followed the marks into the cockpit.

He was surprised (and a little abashed, considering he was supposed to be on guard and hadn't heard her move there) to find Hera in the pilot's chair, facing the stars. She didn't move when the door opened, so he approached slowly, minding the spots on the floor. They led right up to her chair, and when he got there, she turned around and gave him a languid smile.

"Oh, Zeb. You're up late."

Zeb surveyed the twi'lek; Hera was in loose pants and one of Kanan's tunics, her pilot's cap pulled haphazardly around her lekku. The clothes draped on her, making her look small and fragile, a far cry from the composed, capable captain he'd come to know. Her eyes were missing their usual brightness, and they hadn't quite focused on him, as she still looked half-asleep. Her left foot was smeared with the same indigo that had brought him here: twi'lek blood.

He chose his words carefully. "I could say the same about you. You're supposed to be resting, remember?"

Hera's mouth moved to chuckle, but no sound came out. "I remember."

She turned her glassy eyes back to the stars. Zeb was about to raise a question when she spoke again.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" Hera's voice sounded faraway, as if she were still dreaming.

"The stars?" He scratched his head. "Yeah, I suppose."

"Kanan and I used to dance in front of them." She giggled, and the sound, so entirely incongruous to the week they'd been having, shocked him. "That was supposed to be our secret. Oops."

Zeb scratched his head. "That's, um…"

"He wanted to dance. The night before they took him." Hera squeezed her eyes shut. "I should have said yes."

Though still ethereal, there was fresh pain in her voice. Zeb swallowed hard.

"You've, ah, got something on your foot there," he said. Hera blinked in surprise, as if she'd already forgotten he was there, and peered down.

"Oh," she murmured. "I was trying to make caf."

As if that explained anything. Zeb opened his mouth again, but she beat him to it.

"Kanan makes it best, though."

Zeb shifted uncomfortably. "We should probably get that cleaned up—"

"Cleaned up," she repeated, as if hypnotized, and her eyes widened. "I never cleaned it up. I have to— What if the kids go in there? Oh, Zeb—" In a startling display of movement from the formerly torpid twi'lek, she pushed past him, moving in a fast, limping trot towards the galley.

"Hera…" Zeb groaned and followed her. He made it to the galley to find Hera and the broken fragments of a mug, where two realizations struck him at once: one, that Hera wasn't wearing her boots or her gloves, and two, that regardless of this, she was crouched over the broken glass and picking it up with her bare hands.

"Hera!" She had to be sleepwalking, or caught in a lucid dream, Zeb decided; there was no way their commanding officer would ever behave so irrationally if she were fully awake.

Hera didn't acknowledge him, didn't look up, just kept passing glass from her left hand to her right, mumbling "I have to, I have to, I have to…" Blood trickled from her fingers.

"Hera, stop." He squatted next to her and grabbed her shoulders, and the twi'lek froze, looking up with wide, childlike eyes. Zeb regretted his abrasive approach, and cleared his throat.

"You're… you're hurting yourself," he said softly. Hera blinked, slowly; once at him and once down at her hands, which were now covered in gashes. Zeb pulled the waste bin over to her, and he guided her hands to pour the glass into it.

"What about—"

"I'll get the rest of it," he waved her off. "You need to get to the med-bay."

Though lucid Hera would have killed him for it, this Hera let him swing her into a bridal carry and head for medical. She dropped her head against his chest and closed her eyes, and opened them back up when he deposited her gently onto the cot.

"Here," Zeb handed her a patch of gauze. "Hold on to that while I look at your foot."

Hera obediently pressed the gauze between her hands. Zeb inspected her foot; a long cut sliced along the heel. He wiped off the blood, treated it with antiseptic, and carefully bandaged the wound.

"Feel okay?" He grunted.

Hera nodded.

"Okay, let's see your hands."

She held them out; more blue than they were green at this point, and covered with tiny cuts. Zeb couldn't think of a time when Hera hadn't been wearing her pilot's gloves; her hands looked small and delicate without them. The odd thought that Kanan had probably held these hands at some point crossed his mind, and he pushed it away. He repeated the process he'd done with her foot, giving each cut its own tiny bandage, until every wound was wrapped up.

"Zeb?"

Her voice still carried a drowsy, listless quality. He looked up to meet eyes that he didn't recognize as hers—never before had he seen Hera look so hopeless. Under the glaring lights of the med-bay, her skin looked sallow, and her shoulders hung low. Hera's collarbones were jutting out, skin stretched tightly over them, revealed by Kanan's tunic, hanging baggy and loose. The starched white sheets of the cot were eerily reminiscent of the lining of a coffin around her, and pain was written in every line of her face.

She looked desolate, forlorn.

Zeb's stomach sank. "What is it?" He almost didn't want to ask.

She swallowed hard, and even that motion seemed like it was too much for her to bear, like it would break her. "I miss him."

Those three little words slipped into his chest like a knife. He was trying to think of a way to reply when Hera spoke again.

"I don't know it that's worth anything, because it's my fault." Her voice was small. "But I do."

The honesty and disheartenment in her confession sent sorrow pouring into his body, making him feel heavy as sand. Zeb forced his shoulders to stay tall and crouched down so that he could look her level in the eyes. "Of course it's worth something," he said. "Don't talk like that."

Her features contracted, and she broke his gaze, looking down to the floor. "Do they blame me?"

He cocked his head. "Who?"

"The kids," she said. "Do they hate me? Am I the reason he's gone?"

Hera sounded desperate and scared; had he not been in the room, he almost wouldn't have believed it was her voice. She was looking up at him, with wide, naïve eyes that held a sheen of fear, and a realization struck him.

Hera, who would never ask for it sober, who would never so much as breathe a word of her own needs were she fully awake, needed his comfort, and it was this extreme fatigue that had broken down enough of her barriers for her to show him that. Zeb could have kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner—of _course_ she was struggling, of _course_ she was doubting herself. Who wouldn't, after such an ordeal? Hera was strong, likely the strongest out of all of them, but it was unfair and downright irrational to expect her to sacrifice the person she loved without so much as a nightmare. And yet, that was exactly the charade they'd all fallen for, exactly the façade she'd let them believe.

How had he been foolish enough to accept that she'd made a decision like that without agonizing over it? He saw that agony firsthand, now, written in every exhausted line of her face and each dark circle under her eyes. She'd hidden it from all of them, and she'd hidden it well, but the cruel union of insomnia and sorrow had stripped her defenses and left her bare.

He was not only getting a rare glimpse of her pain, but his only chance to alleviate it.

With this realization weighing heavily on his shoulders, Zeb swallowed hard. "You… you did the right thing, Hera."

Relief flowed over her features, softening the taut lines in her forehead and relaxing her eyes. "You think so?" Hera whispered. She was looking at him like she was drowning and he was a boat.

He nodded under her intense gaze. "I do."

She curled her bandaged fingers around one of his and squeezed as tightly as the scratches would allow. "Thank you," she whispered.

Zeb was surprised and moved by the gesture. He blinked for a moment and then hesitantly reached out and touched her shoulder. "You're welcome."

Hera gave him a wan smile, and when he lifted his hand, she sank back against the thin sheets of the medical cot. Her grip on his hand slackened as every last ounce of tension drained from her body, and her eyes fluttered shut. After less than a minute, her head dipped forward in sleep. He waited a moment, watching closely, but the pilot looked more peaceful than she had all week.

Zeb draped a blanket over her on his way out.

* * *

That morning, the sun coming up along with the end of his shift, he heard footsteps. The door to the cockpit opened to reveal Hera leaning against it. She looked better— her eyes were alert, her shoulders straight, and some of the glow had returned to her skin. A far cry from the forlorn ingénue he'd patched up just hours ago. She'd changed back into her flight suit and boots, but not her gloves, and she fluttered her bandaged fingers in a wave.

"Hi," Hera said, with a tired attempt at a smile.

"Morning," he nodded back. Hera shifted her weight, and her teeth worked at her lower lip.

"I think I owe you an apology."

Zeb shook his head and shrugged. "Nothing to be sorry for, captain."

She sighed and fully entered the cockpit, sinking into the pilot's chair next to him. "I don't remember much of anything."

He couldn't keep his lips from smirking up. "You were trying to make caf." It was a running joke between the three of them—had been ever since he'd joined the crew—that Hera made terrible caf. Kanan always said that by the time she realized she needed it, she was too tired to taste how awful it was.

A harsh chuckle shot from her throat. "That explains it. I haven't made caf in years." Hera's amusement vanished at this realization, and her eyes lowered back down to her hands. "I haven't… haven't had to."

They shared a long silence.

"Zeb, about last night—"

He held up a hand to stop her. "Don't mention it."

Her expression flickered in confusion, but Zeb continued. "Just… no more triple shifts, alright?"

The unease in her features was washed away by gratitude and a sigh of relief. Hera gave him a grateful smile. "Alright."

He lumbered out of the cockpit to get some sleep of his own, and that was all they ever spoke of it.

He never asked her if the cuts healed up; she never mentioned the blanket. Bandages and gauze showed up on the list of their next supply run, but nobody noticed the missing glass. She stopped picking up so many shifts; he picked up more.

But there was a new, quiet camaraderie between them, a deeper level of understanding, the bond that only people who had grieved together could form.

It was a small comfort, juxtaposed against the grief of losing Kanan, but it was enough.


End file.
